#rosy queue

ICARIS: the group that tried to conquer the sun

Looking back on the rise, the fall, and the enduring mythology of the group that once burned brighter than the sun.

There was once a time when the world thought ICARIS’ light would never dim. Since their earliest days, people who saw them recognized the incandescent blaze within them.

Imagine this: seven wide-eyed teenagers donned in an odd mix and match of cheap pieces of clothing, all trembling and bursting with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. They smile for their audience of twenty — a few of which are family members, friends, and staff. And, when asked by a gracious interviewer what they wanted to achieve as a new and risky idol band, the leader — straight shoulders, clenched fists, steady voice—declared, “We want to conquer the sun.”

Ridiculous. Audacious. Icarian. And yet when they performed their debut title track, “Dive” — with its bold and youthful chants of being “born for the burning light” and finally facing the sunrise after spending their whole lives in the night — the handful of strangers in the crowd simply knew. These were not ordinary teenagers chasing an impossible dream only to burn themselves out in the process. These were seven teenagers carrying their own furious, ferocious little suns, and they were, without a shred of a doubt, one day going to conquer the sun.

The rest of the First Light trilogy — Soar and Burn — continue their tales of their quest to reach the sun, to burn brighter than the sun. While real-world events did not exactly mirror these lyrics — “Burn” has a famous lyric of ‘dancing with the sun and we’re here to stay’ but at that time, they were barely selling half of their small theater venues for their very first tour — the members believed their end goal so much that it felt like they did achieve their goals. There was a confident, cocky look to them whenever they performed, a surety in their movement and their lyrics. It was difficult to ignore.

And somehow, those delusions turned into reality when the now legendary video of one of the members — nicknamed Sparky by the media because they lit the blaze that was ICARIS — dancing “Burn” went viral on YouTube. Audiences, craving a new era of idol bands and celebrities to obsess over, desperately looked for more. Previous performance videos were shared everywhere, Tumblr fan accounts popped up to share GIF-style recounting of their content, and the company’s decision to give them weekly vlog uploads and a seasonal variety show quickly paid off as episodes began racking up millions of views. The small but terrible fandom called Solace spread these clips — funny, played up arguments in their variety show, shipping fuel from their vlogs, clipped livestream moments — and within weeks, ICARIS was the talk of the town. They were just so lovable, so real and unbothered by the usual expectations on celebrities and idols. They were authentic in every way — from their lyrics to the way they’d speak to fans. At the heart of it all, they felt like seven friends who had somehow stumbled into becoming idols. The last stops of their First Light tour sold out quite quickly afterward and the reviews couldn’t stop singing praises about them — it wasn’t just Sparky who performed like that, it was everyone. These people were the real deal. They were everything the entertainment industry was missing — truthful, talented, tenacious.

This was only the beginning for our seven suns. Their next trilogy — Golden Hour, which consisted of albums Heatwave, Mirage, and Fever — marked their most emotional era yet, an era of some of their highest of highs and some of their lowest of lows. Solaces always say this was their hungriest era. They were quickly becoming the world’s newest obsession, and they still weren’t content. They broke records that had remained untouched for decades. They were on every billboard on every highway in every major city in the world. They were inescapable; they were inevitable. They got their very first Grammy nomination for their Mirage album and were selling out stadiums for their tour. But fame that big came with its own price to pay — a vicious, endless wave of hatred and criticism from people who decided they did not deserve any of what they had. Every conversation was nitpicked, every unflattering angle was spread around, every voice crack was “criticized” (heavy on the quotation marks) to death. The rumors piled up — this member was dating so-and-so, they didn’t really like each other, they were horrible people who burned babies weekly as a deal with the devil for their popularity and success. On top of that, they called themselves idols, which made a few people who already looked down on idols even crueler.

And what did ICARIS do? They released “Fever”, the ender of their second trilogy, and proudly declared that they did not care — they had “swallowed the sun” and it burned hotter inside them than the hate they so relentlessly received. To top it off, or perhaps to prove it, they spent their Golden Hour tour just… going crazy. Close to four hours of nonstop dancing, singing, and letting loose. Some people expressed their worries — at times, it genuinely seemed like the members were dying on stage — but they finished the tour with delirious smiles on their faces and newfound respect from even some of their biggest critics. They had survived one of the biggest hate trains in the entertainment industry through sheer will, passion for the art, and love for each other and their fans.

Their last trilogy — Crimson Tide, which featured albums Sunset, Campfire, and Ashes — was the raw truth under all their bold declarations. It is their most truthful — most uncomfortable — era and the one that marked the end of their careers. This was when they went from idols to true artists in the eyes of the public — they were human beings who were brave enough to share their most intimate thoughts in their songs and in their interviews. Critics to this day claim their Ashes album is one of the best albums in recent times, citing the bruisingly bare lyrics and the hauntingly hollow sound of most of the songs as its strongest points. Looking back, there were moments during the final trilogy where the members seemed exhausted in ways Solaces struggled to explain, but no one truly believed the group was in any danger of ending. If anything, the members seemed more devoted to one another than ever. Which is why no one truly expected what happened during the final encore concert of their Crimson Tide tour. When the members stood on stage with solemn expressions and livestreamed their closing remarks across all their social media accounts, few viewers were prepared to hear them announce an indefinite hiatus. And yet, still, true Solaces weren’t truly scared of the hiatus lasting — in fact, most expressed their relief that the members, who’d run toward the sun tirelessly for the last six and a half years, were finally getting their well-deserved rest.

To this day, I believe they never truly wanted to end. But tragedy struck a few months after their hiatus announcement and their youngest member perished in a house fire. I struggle to write more about this — which perhaps explains the abruptness of the sentence before this — so I will instead skip ahead to the part where, months later, Aurora Entertainment released a single announcement on their social media accounts that ICARIS would cease all group activities, effectively disbanding the band. They posted this on the company’s account, leaving the the ICARIS Twitter account frozen in time. Its final post remained a retweet from the youngest’ last message from the group’s informal fan-facing account — a space they had once used to speak more freely with Solaces. It was a heartfelt message to the fans and to the members thanking them for the years sent together, ending with excitement over the “inevitable reunion”.

Over time, ICARIS became less of a group and more of a cultural ghost. Their music remained unavoidable — overplayed in karaoke rooms, covered by rookies, mentioned routinely by people who “grew up with them” — even as the members themselves drifted into vastly different lives. Some stayed in the spotlight and thrived in solo careers, others chose to go back to being private citizens and take back the normal life their job had stolen from them. None of them ever mentioned ICARIS or the other members at length ever again, deftly avoiding questions with polite responses before eventually ignoring them altogether. And as the years crawled by with not a single public interaction between the members even though they still drifted in similar circles — most of them still had shares in Aurora Entertainment and the soloists still released music under this same company — hope for a reunion had slowly… burned out.

Six years later, on a seemingly ordinary Wednesday, Aurora Entertainment revived the ICARIS Twitter account and announced Ember Dawn, a one-time reunion album and a world tour to commemorate their 15th anniversary and to finally formally close off this chapter of their lives. A documentary series will cover all the events of this reunion — from the planning process to their last encore — with members rumored to speak about their seven years of ICARIS in greater depth than ever before. ICARIS had always released documentary series per trilogy. Their first, Sunborn, chronicled their pre-debut days and their under-appreciated First Light era. The second, Sundrunk, covered their highly-controversial Golden Hour era. And the final one, Sunfall, was released after the group’s disbandment. Each consisted of eight episodes, forming an unflinching portrait of their lives as idols, and as mythologized figures in the public’s eyes. Solaces are expecting this next documentary, titled Sunbound, to be just as devastating.

Sorry it took so long to reply! I'm currently trying to answer stuff from my inbox since I'm turning this blog into an archive.

To answer: Rosa is for sure staying! :) the Angel Guards will be staying, too. Khae (the Shadow, the one that looks like the dead "nightmare under bed") will be there but will take up a much smaller role. Deities will be reworked, so they're not based on Greek Gods anymore.

There wasn’t much publicly known about Tatum Whitman back during the height of ICARIS’ fame. Older Solaces believed they were the trainee the members often spoke of — the one let go right before the final round of evaluations for ICARIS. Saint had called them “nice” before, while Angel had said they were “one of the kindest trainees I’d met” during a roundtable where the group spoke of their pre-debut days, but neither used Tatum’s name and only called them “Mousey” — apparently because of their messy brown hair.

The image of “Tatum” the general public knows best is this: in their hometown city, covered in layers to fight off the early winter chill, with a stroller right between them and Sparky. The entire world had descended into chaos mere moments after the paparazzi shots were posted — no one could’ve ever expected at the time that any member of ICARIS would have a secret child they were keeping hidden. For hours, it was endless conspiracy theories and speculations about the person next to Sparky. People they went to school with had gone online to claim they’d been dating since high school; others had debunked this with swiftness and claimed they were simply childhood best friends and Sparky was probably only comforting Tatum about the recent death of Tatum’s older sister. Aurora Entertainment had been quiet for those hours until, almost nearing midnight, they’d released one official statement: there was nothing romantic, and it was only two old friends catching up with each other. When Sparky had gone back from their trip weeks later, they’d repeated the same thing: “Just a childhood friend; the baby is their niece.” Some have accepted that claim, but others still firmly believe Sparky is raising a child with their childhood best friend.

Tatum Whitman today is an author with a few romance books under their belt. Their most popular one is about a pop star who had gone home for the holidays and reunited with their first love. It’s a deeply complex piece of work about how humans grow and change over the years, but people rarely speak of the writing itself. What’s more important is that it is eerily similar to what the rumors said about their relationship with Sparky, which had made a few more intense fans bombard their ratings with 1 stars. When asked about it, however, Tatum clarified that it was simply fiction and that they’d gotten the idea from a student of theirs.

By age four, Dakila “Kila” Alcantaraz was acting on TV shows and stage musicals in the Philippines. Born into a long list of affluent and influential creatives — and named “Dakila”, which means “great” — Kila was destined for greatness. As one of the younger grandchildren of Evelyn Alcantaraz, award-winning veteran actress who had at times brought Philippine cinema to the international stage, Kila grew up watching their older cousins and siblings slowly make a name for themselves, often wondering when their time would come… and how they’d outshine them all.

By age 17, Kila had big dreams for themself — bigger than what the Philippines could offer. Eager to prove themself worthy of the family name and to bring it even more glory, Kila auditioned for every music company in LA and found little fame through posting online covers, performing in downtown bars, and entering singing competitions like The Voice (they were a finalist for their season). Kila had mentioned how incredibly different it was from the luxurious and pampered world they used to live in, and how their family had begged them to come back home several times — but Kila persevered, so steady in their belief that there was something bigger destined for them. They’d explained it as a “stirring deep within me, an itch I couldn’t scratch off”. And they were right; just days after their mother had booked tickets to take them home herself, they were accepted into Pulse Entertainment and into the final lineup of ECLYPS, the biggest threat to ICARIS’ domination.

Kila was a mystery of sorts to the public eye. On stage, they were a magnetic force that rivaled Sparky easily. They were easily one of — if not the — best singer of their generation, and their dancing was almost just as good — a product of training since they were a child — and they had a unique charisma to them that was impossible to deny. Off stage, no one could quite pin them down. Some had claimed they were rude off-screen, barely sparing any attention to anyone who wasn’t influential enough. Others claim they were gentle and surprisingly generous towards the “little guys”, giving away thousands of dollars as gifts for special occasions. Despite their rather confusing character, Kila has remained “clean” in the public’s eye in over a decade, one of the few celebrities of their size who had never gotten into any major scandal. The only persisting scandal they’d ever been in was the nature of their relationship with Sparky, which people cannot agree on. Some say they were secretly dating, others claim they hated each other, while a good few would claim it was both. According to Kila, however, “I enjoy all their songs and watch their performances in my free time. ICARIS paved the way for idol bands of this generation, and I’m eternally grateful for their existence. Of course, Sparky is the major ingredient to that. More power to them, and someone remind them they owe me drinks.”

oli descoteaux. selkie. m/f.

Ice flying, hair floating, eyes closed, lips parted. Shoulders straightened, leg bent, chin raised, back lowered. The lights are dim, the stands are empty, a classical piece plays on the overhead speakers, the strings haunting the rink.

Skates glide on the ice, hair billows in the wind created. It’s a frightfully elegant dance, a violent succession of movements. The Dancer—white shirt, white hair, white skin; graceful hands, graceful slides, anguish leaking through a serene expression—looks tender, at ease, to any outsider. But the tremble of their eyelids, the barely imperceptible pulling of their lips, once seen, is difficult to ignore.

The music swells, The Dancer spins. Round and round and round. The strings shriek, The Dancer glides from one side of the rink. Then, right as they cross the middle, they leap into the air. The Dancer is a creature of the sea, but there is no discomfort in the way they fly. The picture of grace, suspended in the air like an art piece.

When they land, it is just as gentle, just as graceful, as their leap. They bend low, close enough to kiss the ice, and stay in position. They simply breathe.

It is easy to wonder, sometimes, when one catches The Dancer in such a position, if they miss the ice. If they want to burrow themselves into the first cup of frozen cold they see. If it calls to them—a home only in feeling. It is easy to wonder, sometimes, when one catches The Dancer bend lower until their forehead is to the ice, if there is an end to such bottomless longing.

When they straighten and stand, all serenity and intensity from their dance disappears. Their shoulders straighten, a weight on them even I wince at, and their previous expression turns blank. They do not look towards the stands—towards I, a voyeur of their most intimate and vulnerable moment—and only dust off their knees.

Without dawdling, because The Dancer never dawdles—they glide out of the rink.

Back to the cloud city where water is artificial and the rain does not worship their goddess. Back to duty and the future of a realm that relies on them. Back to a culture they are not familiar with, but a culture they have fallen for.

The Dancer wears their duty like a second coat of skin. Something they only take off when within the rink, or when they dance. In the rink, The Dancer does not follow predetermined rules, The Dancer creates their own dance. In the rink, The Dancer follows their intuition, only thinking of their next move once they are half-done with their current one. They do not dance to the song, they dance with it. It is a conversation with the music, their language having taken decades to master. A language only The Dancer and their song can decipher.

Outside of the rink, The Dancer puts on their coat of duty. Their eyes shadowed and their smiles polite. They speak the language of the people, body always tense, always straight, always elegant. They go about their day and they do not speak of the heaviness of their duty, the fears that plague them, the screams that echo in their head. They only speak of these to the music, in a language no one else is privy to, and it is only in the rink where they can truly be vulnerable.

And I had just watched it all. I had just seen The Dancer confess to the music, thoughts they’d never dare to speak of out loud. I had just watched them break down, crumble, through the movement of their arms and the subtle breaks of their back.

And I will watch it again, because this will happen again. The Dancer will continuously seek the ice, and the ice will always be there for them. The Dancer will continuously brittle under the pressure, the longing for their home, but they will build themself again and again through conversations with the music.

I know how this story goes. I know how The Dancer will leap, one last time, into the air. How instead of landing gracefully on their feet, they will crash and they will shatter and they will be made into glass shards on the ice floor. No more duty, no more anticipatory grief, and no more dances.

The Dancer will be no more. There is no other end to this story.

Valentine Laurent first rose to fame as a promising young actor with haunting performances of deeply wounded characters. They’re known for playing complex characters, the kind that leaves audiences weeping in theaters and critics handing them awards-season nominations and wins.

Valentine was the media’s darling since they first became a celebrity. Sophisticated and classy, with a timeless face that people fawned over — striking red hair, magnetic green eyes, strong bone structure. They were as private as they were talented, which is perhaps why criticisms rarely stuck. They spoke with depth about every role and every issue brought up to them, eloquent and careful with their wording but staying firm when pushed.

The only real criticism people had of them was that they felt too distant, but that was common amongst actors like them. This criticism also grew weak when they were cast as the main lead for ICARIS’s Golden Hour trilogy, where they played an unnamed character who was a guest on the “Sun Hotel” and spent their days and nights falling in love with Sparky’s character, only to lose them to the burning sun by the end of “Fever”. Their chemistry was so palpable that they blew up as a pair despite resistance from fans protective of ICARIS’ image. It didn’t help that their relationship was confusing — matching necklaces, rings, and phone cases; caught on a few private dates; and coy denials on red carpet interviews. Yet, when ICARIS disbanded, it was as if Valentine and Sparky never had a deep connection with them. “I enjoyed filming with them, of course. However, it has been ages since we last spoke to each other. I wish them the best,” was all Valentine had to say when prodded about it three years ago.

Hoshino Mitsuki is always the member most difficult to write—talk—about. They weren’t hard to pin down like Sparky was, nor did they have multiple controversies like Devan did, but everything that unfolded about them was so terribly tragic to think about. There is too much and too little to be said about the ball of sunshine, source of hope, brighter-than-the-sun that was Hoshino Mitsuki, and even their members refuse to speak about them at length. But for the sake of this feature article, and because we all believe that Mitsuki deserves to be remembered as the beautiful human being they were, I shall try.

Hoshino Mitsuki was the youngest of all the trainees under Elysium Entertainment, having entered the system at just 12 and a half years old. They got in through an audition held in Japan, and their now famous audition video is a controversial one even to this day. They barely had the skills, and it showed to an almost embarrassing degree—forgot their lines and confidently sang the incorrect notes, stumbled all over their feet and messed up the blockings—but anyone watching would agree that the beaming smile they had on as they performed was hypnotizing. It was like they were having the time of their life despite all the mistakes they were making. “It was impossible to ignore,” reasoned one of the people who’d agreed to accept Mitsuki into the program, “they simply belonged on stage.” When they were flown to California from Japan, Mitsuki barely knew any English aside from “thank you,” “sorry,” and “when is lunchtime?”—a little tidbit they liked to laugh about until their last days. They had to rely on Jiwon, who was fluent in both English and Japanese, to translate for them and to teach them English until they were confident enough to handle conversations on their own—this is quite obvious in the way they’d taken all of Jiwon’s English-speaking quirks at first before their way of speaking became a blend of all the other members’ quirks and accents.

Mitsuki was the perfect mix of all the other members—they had Jiwon’s strong sense of professionalism and Saint’s cheerleader-like qualities; they possessed Sparky’s raw charisma and Devan’s risky boldness; and they learned eloquence during interviews from Angel and tenderness and calmness during stressful times from Cloud. This is perhaps because they had to rely on the other members for ten whole years—their performative years at that—and because it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the members, though not much older, essentially raised Mitsuki. They turned Mitsuki from someone who could barely carry a note and could only flap their arms to someone who could cover the more skilled members’ lines when they were sick and someone who had plenty of center positions during dance breaks. Plenty of behind-the-scenes footage supports the idea that the members raised Mitsuki, as they were often shown to be doting on the youngest—reminding them to eat, spending hours in the arcade just to get the toy they wanted from a claw machine, and taking them on family trips on days off. But it wasn’t a one-sided relationship; all the members have at least once voiced out that Mitsuki was a driving force for the group to keep continuing even when times were hard. They’d mentioned Mitsuki as their cheerleader during their dispute with the company, eagerly looking forward to standing on stage again with “hearts of rookies” even though things seemed dire for the other members.

Mitsuki was also a big fan of “capturing the moment.” They were often seen with video and film cameras, trailing after the other members to make sure their memories were stored forever. They were the brain behind most of the group’s extra content—vlogs, variety content, and even the trilogy documentaries that first came from a scrapped documentary featuring their pre-debut days. Half the reason why people fell for ICARIS was their authenticity, their personalities, and their vastly different relationship dynamics—we wouldn’t have seen so much of these without Mitsuki’s genius. Part of this is also because Mitsuki truly treasured fan interactions, posting almost daily and replying endlessly to fans whenever they had time. When the pandemic hit and we were all forced to stay indoors, Mitsuki went live almost every single day just to keep fans company, chatting and singing with Solaces as though they were talking with friends and not strangers. Mitsuki, at this time, was the Solaces’ solace. The one constant source of happiness when the world had turned so dreary.

Perhaps this is why their death hurt so much. It would’ve hurt even if they weren’t as big with interactions as they were, but Mitsuki being such a big source of joy and strength during those trying times, being so present, made their sudden absence so jarring. Their death shook the entire world—I’d say it’s almost impossible for people to not know about the incident. We’d seen the blurry videos of the members in different states of distress waiting for news from the firefighters, taken from a helicopter view of Mitsuki’s mansion. We all read the speculation, the rumors, the insults hurled at each member before Jiwon, on their personal account, had gone online and left a long and firm message about respecting the grieving members and the deceased by stopping all the absurd speculations. We saw how the group slowly drifted apart—updates together quickly going down in numbers—and we all know that the disbandment announcement just two months later was inevitable.

A house fire, something so easily avoidable cutting someone’s precious life short. No foul play, no self-harm, just a cigarette butt not snuffed out completely and sleeping pills to combat Mitsuki’s lifelong problems with insomnia. Mitsuki, who had spent half their life in the pressure cooker they call the idol industry, gone so quickly. It was unfair; it was difficult to accept. Until now, with the announcement of a full group—as full as they can be, at least—album drop and a tour, Mitsuki’s ghost haunts everything. They’re the most mentioned name—the highest trending name when the news first came out—and some people are understandably upset and uneasy about the reunion. ICARIS had never been anything but seven. Even with sick members or those who had to be absent for a while due to other responsibilities, the rest of the members never failed to talk about them until it felt like their absence wasn’t too big. With Mitsuki truly gone, it’s difficult to imagine how this album drop and tour will go in regards to Mitsuki’s absence.

Anyone who knew Devan Tiwari from a young age would know that Devan had always had a streak of rebelliousness in them. Rarely malicious, sometimes out of place, but Devan Tiwari knew their path in life since they were a child and stubbornly intended to follow it through to adulthood. So when their parents gave them a choice to make—a stable family home or to pursue an unpredictable singing career—Devan packed up and left at just 15 years old. For months, Devan took on odd jobs and lived in friends’ houses, moving whenever they felt they’d overstayed their welcome. It wasn’t until a few friends mentioned going to LA and asking Devan to go with them that Devan found their ticket into the industry.

“It wasn’t immediately easy,” Devan had said during the group’s first documentary, Sunborn, “but I had support.” Support for Devan had been in the form of older friends who’d bring them around everywhere, and an elderly lady who had lived alone and paid Devan to do her daily chores. When Devan auditioned for and got into the group—“I was promised trainee allowance,” Devan explained with a laugh, “and I was hoping for a solo career, not one in a group”—they’d moved out of this kind lady’s basement but didn’t fully cut off ties with her. She had spent the next few years supporting ICARIS’ career, being one of the twenty first audience members, and Devan paid everything back by supporting her financially. This elderly lady—unnamed to this day but abuela to Devan and the other members—was one of ICARIS’ biggest fans until her last days.

Devan is a vital and irreplaceable part of ICARIS—the main vocal who was also among the top dancers and Cloud Rattanakorn’s assistant choreographer. They had a strong, emotional voice that carried most of the group’s most demanding melodies and adlibs, and their background in street dancing had helped them guide the other members’ dancing. Perhaps this is why the company never let them go, despite many petitions to remove them for “ruining the group’s image.” Devan is one of—if not the—most controversial members of the group, known for late-night lives where they’d fight back against the haters who wouldn’t leave the group alone. They were always on the cover of tabloids, drowning in rumors of dating, drug-related activities, and sometimes physical fights.

But most of all, Devan is known for being the catalyst to ICARIS’ breaking away from their abusive company. They had gone on live at 3 AM one day, sporting a black eye and a split lip, and announced to the world that the members were being mistreated, abused, and exploited. The rest of the story of ICARIS VS Elysium Entertainment was a mixture of uncomfortably public moments and steady private conversations—a story where they ended up winning and taking control of the company. Devan is, and will always be, known for being the one brave enough to save the rest of the group, and perhaps this is why the public could never fully truly hate them anymore.